Agricultural News

Oklahoma Weather Leaves Available Nutrients In Limbo

Tue, 17 Jun 2014 17:46:56 CDT

The impact of weather has been severe for Oklahoma's winter crops. The state's wheat and canola crops have battled drought, freeze damage and just recently the state has seen widespread rains. With that combination, Oklahoma State University Assistant Professor of Precision Nutrient Management Brian Arnall says these crops hasn't maximized the use of fertilizer and soil nutrients.

"For the big part of what we've seen with the crop going to harvest is there has not been a big use of the nutrients put in the ground," Arnall said. "The pre-plant had some response across locations, much of the top dress never made it into the crop much less made it into the soil."

"If the summer crop is on a failed piece of wheat ground or failed canola ground we're likely doing well on nutrients, however if you have coming in after summer crop after summer crop or you aren't going into failed grounds, with this current moisture there's a lot of guys are starting to see a lot of definicencies, " Arnall said.

"With this moisture is pushing growth, its pushing nutrients throughout the profile and we are starting to see some deficiencies develop, so my biggest recommendation is get out out there in your fields start scouting and then try and get on top of it," Arnall said. " With the weather we have we have very good yield potential sitting in the field on these summer crops."

In looking ahead to the next winter crop in preparing for September and October planting season, Arnall highly recommends farmers getting soil samples in the next month or so or soon after harvest and get a concept of what's out there in the soil.

"We might very well maybe be going into a high residual into the next crop, which means make sure you've got something in the soil," Arnall said. "We may pull back a little bit with our pre-plant, but be ready to top dress if we have that right environment. In some situations we will sitting with a healthy residual."

One thing farmers should consider is how much fertilizer was put down in terms of pre-plant and topdress and look at what grain and forage has been removed and subtract that from the equation and you can use apart of that as your residual if you don't have a soil test.

With the heavier than normal precipiation falling across much of the state, farmers may be looking at stabilizers. ," Arnall says stabilizers are quite popular in the northern end of the corn belt that have tiling because of the abundance of mosture because they have a significant amount of water leaching out of the root zone. Typically Oklahoma doesn't get the heavy on-going rains like those regions.

Arnall has a link on his website, where he has looked at every journal publication that reviewed all of these products. His listing of products that have peer reviewed and farmers can make this decision for themself. Click here to find this information.